Ranked #3212

Brain Powerd

This was a random "I've run out of stuff to watch, wonder what this is" acquisition for me. What little info I could find was pretty incoherent, but then the likes of AnimeNfo does, just occasionally, tend toward obtuse gibberish now and again, so I decided to give it a chance. I'll work out what's really going on once I get going, I thought.

And yet...Brain Powerd's storyline is the single most incoherent plot I have ever seen outside of fanfics by Attention Deficit thirteen year olds, a screenplay that reads like a brainstormed spider diagram. It is truly, utterly incoherent to a level that makes me astounded it was OK'd for broadcast. I usually have no problem with complex narratives; Ghost In The Shell 2 made perfect sense to me, Lain and Paprika too, most of those things people say are hard to follow...but this...phew.

Following the interminably long opening credits, featuring all the main characters, of both genders, flying about naked, your average episode starts. One minute, two characters are friends, happy to search the world for what appear to be giant flying CDs that Majikally turn into mecha. Then for no clear reason one defects to the other side, then their grandmother defects from the other side. Cut to token indian woman fighter pilot ranting about the god Ogun. Then these former friends stand in mid air in their mecha, having illogical arguments with each other, swearing to kill each other and yet never quite getting round to it. Up pops Arab oil billionaire Mister Mohammed out of the blue and offers to turn the heroes' ship into a gold-plated orphanage. Oh no, the submarine captain's son doesn't love her because she works so hard so he's defecting too! Wait, our hero Yuu's sister Kanan (that's not really her name but she insists on being called that) appears. What side is she on today? Does it matter? But wait, here's the longest eyecatch in history!

Leaving aside the almost reflexive defection rate, possibly it's a problem of overcomplexity, as the story appears to have a great deal of ground to cover, many twists and turns, but not enough reasoning to go around. Time and again, ideas are presented, cursorily used and then simply left hanging while another idea is thrust into the spotlight. Maybe bad editing is also partly to blame. To make it worse, the whole productiion not only takes itself deadly seriously, but there's this air of slightly inept pacing that attempts to make everything feel urgent and doom-laden. Thanks to not really understanding what's going on, this just falls completely flat.

Another problem is the enormous cast, a great many of whom appear every episode but often for only one or two scenes, or may be introduced heavily, ignored for ten episodes and then returned to as if nothing had happened in between. The series' transparent attempts at inclusive characterisation are also highly distracting; the viewer spends a lot of time collecting tallies of ethnic stereotypes in Brain Powerd's attempts to show how the whole planet is under threat. Add to this the amazingly complex webs of several family relationships that span both sides of the conflict, poorly and momentarily explained yet vital for comprehending what's going on and why this teenage mecha pilot wants to kill that one but can't, etc. Throw in a trio of textbook cute kids to ostensibly be zany and adorable, and actually end up transparently tacked on and immensely irritating, and you have the kind of cast that you really, really wish died every episode. Yet no-one ever really does; not even the sensitive, tragic one with random Leukemia. Fights are a frequent occurrence, but anyone getting the remotest bit hurt is very rare indeed, the ensemble simply fly around and go "pew pew", then run away again, swearing revenge.

Brain Powerd's brand of sci-fi is, to me, the lowest form - when the story gets stuck, it just makes something up. Mecha banged up beyond repair? No matter, here's a girl who lives in the middle of nowhere in a log cabin. With her mecha. Which is Special and Unique. And she's dying. She seems to like me, so I can merge my knackered mecha with her Special one and be even cooler than ever! Nuclear weapons? No problem, by applying our child genius to our pyramidal aircraft carrier, we can make a special energy field that makes them disappear! And so on.

Mecha fans are likely to be disappointed too. Brain Powerds and Gran Cheres are peculiar, rather uniformly ugly multicoloured biomechanical efforts with groin-mounted cockpits (whose amazing brainwave was THAT?) out of which people are prone to lean and have idiotic conversations, and from which people keep falling. Plus they're that particularly awkward kind of giant fighting machine that (you guessed it) have feelings, which certain pilots such as our fool heroine Hime claim to understand. They are apparently controlled purely by a strangely emo optimism; cries of "Come on Nelly Brain, you can do it, you brave boy! I can feel what you feel, you're afraid. But you need to be brave" and so on appear to be the key to piloting success. Artistically, nothing about the series is very impressive, with much seeming cheap. None of the characters are particularly strikingly designed (apart from that one guy who ALWAYS stands tweaking his nipples) and none of the mechanical design, backgrounds or settings very original or interesting. Music is fairly atrocious, dreary, overly recycled semi-orchestral stuff with grating opening and ending themes - NOT one of Yoko Kanno's greatest moments. Voice acting is OK, I suppose, especially given the material the seiyuu had to work with. I got the impression they had little better idea of what was going on than I did.

This is right down there with the very worst anime I've ever seen. Things this bad can be fun because they're so bad, but I must report that even that has a limit. I got 18 episodes in and my will failed me for several weeks; I just couldn't face continuing until I'd had a rest and watched a few things that did make sense, just to make sure I was still able to follow a plot and not suddenly suffering early-onset alzheimers. Finishing the series was probably one of the hardest things I've ever forced myself to do in the field of anime - and all in the vain hope that something might begin to make sense. Don't make the same mistake yourselves. read more

A anime with big ideas

Brain Powered is a anime with big ideas. The problem with it is it's execution. First the story is in the earth's near future. Where a strange ruin, known as Orphan, has begun to surface from Earth's oceans. Orphan first appeared from under the tectonic plates, and all signs point to it surfacing and causing a world wide catastrophe when it reaches its destination above the waves. This activity from Orphan has created earthquakes, seismic waves, and tsunami's, which have battered the land regions of Earth, producing wide spread floods and destruction. The humans inside Orphan plan to change the earth drastically by raising Orphan out of the ocean. They also use ant-bodies, giant robots created from Orphan. The story follows Isami Yuu who flees Orphan and Hime a member of Novis Noah a huge ship build to batttle Orphan.

Now that I gave the basic story of Brain Powered let's get to the review. Like I said earlier the show had big ideas trying to reach the height of other anime along the lines of RahXephon and Saikano and it generally does. The story I would give a 10 it kept me interested. The characters I'd give 9, they weren't cardboard cut outs and made you care about them. The animation was a 6, it was granny and looked like it was made in the late 80s. Also there were the giant robots that looked terrible. Finally the music I'd give a 7 on, there wasn't anything special but was still good. Overall I'd give it a 8. It wasn't a classic or great like the anime listed above, but it was still very good. read more